Leo the Lion engages the fans during the opening ceremony of the new refurbished BC Place Stadium for the Lions-Edmonton Eskimos CFL game on Sept. 30, 2011, one of two occasions so far that the Lions have played in the renovated facility with the roof off.Les Bazso
/ PNG files

VANCOUVER - An NDP government would attempt to sell the newly renovated BC Place Stadium, and possibly the Vancouver Convention Centre, to help cover the significant losses at both publicly owned facilities, Adrian Dix announced Wednesday.

"When the operation of a facility draws tens of millions of dollars in public subsidy every year, and has left taxpayers with a mountain of debt, I believe we have to take a close look at whether that's a business we should be in," the NDP leader said while standing in front of BC Place.

"If the private sector can do a better job running BC Place, while freeing taxpayers of millions of dollars in losses and reducing public debt, we've got a win-win, and we will pursue that."

Dix said any sale would have to protect the future of both the B.C. Lions and the Vancouver Whitecaps, who use the stadium as their base of operations.

He added that any buyer would have to protect the contract terms and conditions for employees working at the stadium, though the NDP said a new owner would be allowed to change the name.

Government documents show the Crown corporation that manages BC Place and the convention centre — BC Pavilion Corporation or PavCo — expects to run a $100 million deficit over the five years from 2011 to 2015, and that as of March 2012, the organization was $1.2 billion in debt.

Dix would not say how much he thinks the province could get for the stadium — or the convention centre — but said he will form an expert review panel immediately after forming government to assess the overall business case.

"We've just spent $517 million upgrading the stadium, and some people say it would not be worth anywhere near that," he said.

"That's one of the things the panel would have to look at."

Dix said the panel would have 90 days to make recommendations on improving the overall management of PavCo, or selling assets.

He said that review would focus on selling BC Place, but he "wouldn't exclude" the idea of selling the convention centre as well.

He said revenue gained from any sale would be used solely to pay down the PavCo debt.

Premier Christy Clark immediately panned the plan, saying she believes Dix is making up policy on the fly.

"If the government had considered (BC Place) a surplus asset, and there had been a buyer that was willing to pay for it, it might have been something that the government might have considered over the last 12 years," she said at a campaign stop in Sicamous.

"It's not leadership and it's not responsible to decide you're going to pull numbers out of thin air and say that you want to privatize government assets that first of all, aren't surplus and second for which you don't even have a buyer," she added.

"(The) first thing I thought when I heard this was somebody better stop handing Adrian Dix napkins because every time he gets one, he writes a new policy on the back of it."

Dix pushed back, especially given that the Liberals just did a major renovation on the stadium.

"I suppose it's a good defence by the Liberal party to say they spent well over $500 million on a stadium and it's not worth anything in their opinion," he said.

"I'm hopeful that they're wrong with respect to that asset and that investment."

The PavCo board includes two B.C. Liberal candidates, including board chair Peter Fassbender and board member Suzanne Anton.

Kirk Kuester, a managing director at Colliers International, said he thinks the BC Place property could be difficult to sell as a stadium.

"I don't know that it's something that could be executed in any reasonable time frame because there's so much risk associated with its ongoing use, either as a development site or as a stadium," he said.

"If you're trying to shift the responsibility of operating the stadium to somebody else, that's a thin market."

Kuester said that if the sale was to include a covenant for the buyer to continue to operate the stadium, either indefinitely or for its economic life, a purchaser could buy it either to operate it, or to lease it back to PavCo.

The land that BC Place sits on could be worth as much as $725 million if it was zoned for condos, Kuester added.

But, he said, that figure would only be attainable if the land was all rezoned for condos, which is unlikely because the city would almost certainly require at least some of the 16.7-acre site to be used for rental apartments and offices.

A rezoning to allow for condominiums at a five times floor space ratio would be consistent with the density in the surrounding residential towers.

"I'm not going to say you could ever sell it for that — there's really nothing comparable — there's nothing that big," Kuester said. "But generally speaking, sites are selling for $175 to $200 per buildable square foot."

Kuester emphasized that knocking down the stadium would be a huge expense on top of the land value and that a project of that size would take at least 10 years to develop and sell.

Also on Wednesday, the NDP released its comprehensive platform for the coming election, capping days of policy announcements the party has been making throughout the province.

New elements of the party's plan include the creation of a Ministry for Women's Equality, which would "promote social and economic equality through all government programs and enhance services to women and children."

It will also address the recommendations of the recent Missing Women Inquiry.

The party will also form a non-binding panel, under the Labour Code, to recommend changes to the way unions are certified.

Particularly, the party has said it would consider ending the secret ballot for union sign-ups in favour of an open card check system, which generally involves disclosing workers' preferences on unionization to colleagues and employers.

The panel will have 90 days from its formation to make recommendations.

The platform also showed the party believes the judicial inquiry it has long promised into the sale of BC Rail will take two years, and cost at least $10 million.

The party has promised to balance the budget during its fourth year in office, though the plan released Wednesday only stretched three years and did not show how the party would accomplish the task.

The party estimates it will run a deficit of $452 million during its third year of office, something it said is due to problems left behind by the B.C. Liberals.

Finance Minister Mike de Jong called the NDP's platform reckless spending that is beyond $3 billion and is testing the capacity of the Spend-O-Meter the Liberals installed to track the NDP's campaign promises.

"This isn't a platform, this is a weekend with the Kardashians," said de Jong, alluding to the money-is-no-concern outlandish lifestyles of the reality-show family.

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Dix says NDP will try to sell BC Place to cover PAVCO debt

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